for her.” Her voice broke, and Thorne watched her straighten her spine as she told her father bracingly, “Why don’t you wait for her on the bench by the front door where it’s nice and sunny?”
“It’s raining! I’m bored. I should be with you looking for her. Why don’t I come out for a bit and help you?”
Isis curled her fingers into her palms. Thorne laid his hand over hers, and she shot him a grateful look. “Daddy, you’re in Seattle, and you were hurt the last time you were in Cairo. You’re in a place I know you’ll be safe. Please be patient. I’m here in Cairo, and we’re looking for her. I’ll find her for you, I promise.”
Several moments of silence went by while the professor seemed to be trying to process the information. Isis had a shitload more patience than Thorne would’ve had in a similar position.
“You’re a good girl, honey. Call us and let us know how you’re doing. Your mother sends her love.”
“I will, and you call me if you remember anything. Even the smallest thing might help us. I love you, Daddy. Be good.”
“Find her for me, Isis. Just find her. I don’t know why, honey, but she’s in grave danger.”
She put up a hand even though Thorne wasn’t about to say anything. “Give me a minute, okay?” She put her phone back in her camera bag and sighed. “My mother died fifteen years ago. And Cleo in grave danger? She’s been in the same resting place since thirty BCE!”
Thorne took his hand off hers to rest on the gun lying beside his hip. He wasn’t sure if sympathy was what she needed right now. Hell, if it was, he wasn’t the man for the job. Her sadness was palpable, but she didn’t cry as he suspected she wanted to do. She held on to her emotions by a tenuous thread.
“It’s so unfair. As wacky as he can be, my father has a brilliant mind and a talent for archaeology. At one time he was the top Egyptologist in the world. It’s so damned unfair.”
“He’s being well taken care of.”
“Right,” Isis said briskly. “And we have a puzzle to solve. Clearly something is going on. Najid doesn’t know we can’t confirm him ever meeting with my father, so a lie was pretty risky—if that’s what it was.”
And maybe he did know the good professor was incapable of remembering, so he felt he could lie with impunity. “We don’t know that what he said isn’t the truth. But you know that people lie for any number of reasons. Deceptive gain, or to escape punishment—number-one reason: to cover their arses,” he said dryly. “How about we pay a visit to your father’s friend in the hospital and see if he can shed any light on a possible connection between your father and Najid?”
“Sure,” she said, biting her lip, something Thorne wanted desperately to do himself. “Keep heading this way; you’ll see the hospital off to the right. I hate to say it, but I’m not sure what to do next. I have no idea where my father might have hidden more clues, which means we’re at a dead end, right?”
“Not necessarily.” Thorne kept an eye on the two vehicles tailing them. An innocent man didn’t follow the daughter of a man he claimed not to know. “Beniti al-Atrash might have more insight than his son.”
Thorne changed lanes, speeding up. The Jeep might look like half the other vehicles on the road, but the engine was souped up and could outrun anything chasing them. Thorne didn’t want to put that to the test. He hoped the men following them were there merely for surveillance. He didn’t want a shoot-out with Isis in the car.
The vehicles kept pace. Local plates, tinted windows. He punched in the license plates one-fingered on his phone, then added a question mark. Let London ID them.
“Fingers crossed.”
Thorne didn’t believe in crossed fingers or lucky rabbits’ feet. His good-luck charm was an automatic weapon. His Glock tended to even the playing field.
It didn’t take long to reach the hospital on El Kasr El Aini Street in Garden City, and they found al-Atrash’s room on the second floor without incident.
Christ. He hated hospitals. The smell of antiseptic curled through Thorne’s nervous system and settled like an oil slick in his gut. The sight of a wheelchair, shoved against the wall, made him remember…
“Are you all right?” Isis asked, laying her hand lightly on his arm.